Many gun enthusiasts involved in hunting or target shooting reload their own cartridges. There are several reasons to reload a cartridge rather than buying a new cartridge. Primarily, the gun enthusiast will reload a cartridge to save money. In particular, a cartridge includes a casing, a bullet, gunpowder, and a charged primer. After a cartridge has been fired, the casing and a spent primer remain. The cost of a bullet, gunpowder, and a charged primer is significantly less than the price of a new cartridge. In addition, the gun enthusiast is able to experiment with a variety of different bullet and gunpowder combinations, which enables the gun enthusiast to make customized cartridges for a specific purpose.
A typical reloading apparatus will consist of a rotable turntable with a plurality of stations. As the turntable is raised and lowered, the turntable is indexed to advance a casing to the next station. At each station one of the following reloading operations is performed: (1) placing a casing on the turntable, (2) removing the spent primer from the casing, (3) resizing the casing to eliminate any expansion caused by firing the cartridge, (4) opening the mouth of the casing to facilitate insertion of a bullet at a subsequent station, (5) inserting a charged primer into the casing, (6) dispensing a predetermined amount of gunpowder into the casing, (7) placing a bullet into the mouth of the casing, (8) advancing the bullet a distance into the casing, (9) crimping the mouth of the casing that was widened at a previous station which allows the bullet to be fed into the gun, and (10) ejecting the reloaded cartridge from the reloader.
The manner in which the casing is positioned and retained on the turntable is of paramount importance. Misalignment of the casing at one of the reloading stations has several disadvantages associated therewith. For example, small misalignments may adversely affect the accuracy of the reloaded cartridge. Larger misalignments many cause the reloading apparatus to become jammed, possibly damaging the cartridge and thereby making the cartridge unusable.
It is also important not to retain a casing on the turntable in too tight a manner. In particular, when a casing is retained on the turntable in an extremely tight manner, it is difficult to eject the cartridge at the final station. Therefore, a mechanism to eject the cartridge from the turntable must be found that is compatible with the mechanism used to retain the casing on the turntable.
Another critical station is the station that positions the bullet in the casing. The bullet must be properly aligned with the casing in a consistent manner. Highly accurate shooting requires that there be little variation from one cartridge to the next. A disadvantage associated with reloaders that have heretofore been designed is that bullets are not properly aligned in the mouth of cartridges in a consistent manner.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the disadvantages set forth above.